Beginning of War?

If it hadnít been President Roosevelt with his eloquent voice on radio, for the fireside chat, as he called it, he kept the American people on the level. And aroused them enough to know that we had a job on our hands and we had to win. He did a tremendous job of arousing the American people and getting us ready. I remember he said we had so much on order and so much on hand. And the truth of the matter was we didnít have hardly anything.

But American industry went to work, and you wouldnít believe how fast we converted to making airplanes, tractors, trucks, tanks, ammunition and guns. And how fast the government built factories to build those things. A lot was going on right here in Kansas City.

I remember one trip that I took. I was wrapped up in the Chamber of Commerce effort at the time. Alan Marsh, Bob Long, Charlie Kimball and I went to Washington. Through Senator Simden, we had an audience with all the branches of the defense. And they put on a show, that you just couldnít expect. Because our concern was "Is KC doing all it can do to supply what the Defense needs in this war effort?" Every branch of service put on a show for us of what they were buying, where they were buying and how much they needed. And how much back ordered, and what we could do, that we might not be doing. It was very helpful.

The Navy and well, every department of Defense, knew exactly what they were doing, why they were doing it, where they were buying it. And what we could do that we might not be doing that would help.

When you think of KC, we had a place out at Western part of Wyandotte county that made ammunition. We had another plant on the East Side of KC that had something to do with the services and Mr. Darby was making boats. We rented our American Royal facilities to build gliders.

War Prisoners During the war, we had a service here, a mounted guard. We had a uniform of some kind, nothing fancy. We had horses, I guess there was 35 or 40 of us. Fred Olander was our captain. And we were prepared in case of need to mount those horses and do a job as officers of the day anywhere in KC. But we were never called.

The other thing that was quite interesting, we had a lot of Japanese war prisoners stationed at Liberty. I donít know where we picked them up. We had quite a few of them, and we couldnít get any help here at the yards. (stockyards) We transported some of those Japanese from Liberty to here to do our work, to clean the pens, repair the fences, things like that. They could do it and did do it. No problem with them whatever.

All of the sudden we had 7 different fires break out in the stockyards. Of course, everybody right away thought the Japanese did it. Well the Japanese didnít have anything to do with it. We caught the man that had done it. Heíd had a little too much to drink, and somebody bribed him to do it. We sent him to the Penitentiary for quite a little spell.

Pearl Harbor I think I was right here at the yards when I heard about it. And of course, it disturbed me, like it would anybody else, to think that the Japanese had slipped up on us with all the defense material we had and all the facilities we had at Pearl Harbor. Yet they almost destroyed us. Itís one of those things that President Roosevelt didnít hesitate a second to declare with the consent of Congress and started getting ourselves together.

American Royal Transfer to Glider?

Well, they came here and wanted the place to build gliders. Of course, they knew about the facilities. They looked them all over and decided theyíd do. So I negotiated the agreement with them.

It was amazing to see those gliders develop, and taken down the street here without their wings on them, over to Fairfax where they put the wings on them and then took them out of here. They served a purpose in the Army.

How was Union Station important?

Union Station was important, because all the railroads came to and left KC from all directions. There wouldnít be a day pass when several trainloads of troops would go through KC and Union Station. They usually unloaded and fed them there and sometimes housed them overnight in KC. If they didnít, they housed them on the train. But they fed them at the Union Station. There were thousands of them. They were going to every direction. Camps all over the country. But this was the central point.

The processing plants here you see, fabricated a lot of our grain into food that shipped out of here too. We shipped a lot of grain out of here, too.

Ordered to stay stateside The War Manpower Commission ordered me to stay right here. I was ordered to report, you see, just like anybody else,. because I had to register. They asked me what my job was, and where I worked and what I did. I told them I was in the managing side of the stockyards. Of course, they knew the Stockyards and said, "Well thatís an important industry, you stay right there." Said, "If you moved from there, you report to us. But other than that you stay on your job." And they called me two or three times. But they never batted an eye. "You stay right there." And I did.

The draft people recognized the Stockyards as a very essential industry. And of course, me in management side of it was considered an essential employee too. I assume thatís why they did it. They had me report every 90 days or six months, Iíve forgotten which, to satisfy them that Iím still on the same job.

Kansas City Benefit?

I canít say that we benefited. But of course, when the war was over, the industries here that had been wrapped up in war production converted back into peace time production. For instance, I remember Sen. Darby made a lot of material for John Deere in his factories where they made the boats, Of course, the GM plant went back to making automobiles and so did the Ford plant. And well, Sheffield Steel in those days converted back to making products for their own trade. So it was a matter of reconverting to peacetime needs.

How did KC war production help nationally?

We went to Washington to visit with all those defense departments, to be sure that we were doing all we could do. If it had been desperate need, we would have found some way to help. I donít know how, but weíd have found it. Because Kansas City has that kind of spirit. Itís a great city.

Patriotism today vs then?

When Roosevelt started the Selective Service program, they signed up and went to war. They didnít want to, of course. But it was part of being an American. It was a duty they had to do. Lot of things I did in the war I didnít want to do, but that wasnít important. (What was?) Get that war won. Do what it takes to do it and get it won.